


Lights On

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Body Worship, Canon Disabled Character, Childhood Trauma, Fluff and Angst, Kink Meme, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, Shyness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:42:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann's solitude and shame was an immovable object inside him. He had yet to find out that it would soon encounter an unstoppable force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights On

This is a fill for a couple of prompts on the kinkmeme (click on the links to read the full prompts): [Hermann is self-conscious about his scars](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/350.html?thread=459870#t459870), [Newt introduces Hermann to rimming](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/350.html?thread=656478#t656478), and [Hermann performs oral sex on Newt (for a change)](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/1613.html?thread=1614669#t1614669). I had intended to make this a simple fluffy fic about drawn-out sexytimes but then all these feels and angst were like “Hey guys what’s going on in here?” and I kind of just let them in because I’m a big push-over. :-/

 

 

**1.**

 

Every day, Hermann Gottlieb observed precisely the same routine…a routine which was driving Newton Geiszler to madness:

He awoke at 6 AM, selected his clothes for the day, and took them into the bathroom with him. He emerged twenty-five minutes later, showered and shaved and fully dressed. He ate tea and toast for breakfast in his room (their room) while watching the news on the video screen. At 7 AM he was in the lab.

What time he left the lab varied from day to day, depending on if there was an emergency that needed dealing with, or if he just became absorbed in a coding run. But regardless of the time, at the end of his day he would retrieve his dinner from one of the refrigerators in the kitchen, bring it back to his room, then take his neatly-folded pajamas into the bathroom, where he would have a second shower before dinner. (Even if Newt hadn’t thrown a piece of kaiju sinew at him to annoy him, even if he hadn’t stepped in anything on Newt’s side that day, he still felt filthy after a few hours in the lab.) His dressing gown was on a hook inside the bathroom door. Upon exiting the bathroom this time, he would be in pajamas and dressing gown, and would heat his dinner on the hot-plate (if necessary) before consuming it.

If it wasn’t too late in the evening, he would read or watch some more news. Finally, he would hang his dressing gown back up and get in bed, always lying on his back with the covers tucked under his arms. He would wake the next morning in the same position.

What this amounted to, and what was driving Newt to madness, was the fact that the two of them had been in close quarters for years now, and Newt had never once caught a glimpse of Hermann naked; not even so much as an inch of flesh below the neck or above the wrists, in fact. Whether in a shirt or pajamas, he always buttoned up to the top button, and never rolled up his sleeves. When the weather got hot, he would remove his jacket, and when it was sweltering, he would simply elect not to wear a sweater-vest that day. Newt had tried to “accidentally” see him naked in the bathroom by barging in to insist on brushing his teeth or shaving while Hermann was showering, but Hermann never failed to lock the door.

It was just stupid. Roomies were supposed to see each other naked all the time. It was supposed to be no big deal, just two dudes, maybe one of them comes out of the shower for just one second to grab something before going back in to shave. Or they’re sleeping in just boxers with no covers on in the summer because it was too damn hot. No big deal at all. Instead, Hermann chose to eschew this custom, and sometimes it was all Newt could think about.

Several months ago, after the lights were out and they were in bed, Newt took off his shirt and boxers, climbed out of his bunk, and initiated what he considered the culmination of years of unresolved tension: he got under the covers with Hermann and suggested that they should be involved in a more physically intimate relationship with each other. (What he actually did was ask in a stage whisper if they could jerk each other off a little bit.) Hermann did not say “Yes” or “No.” Instead, after a half-minute of silence he told Newt to go get a towel and bring it back. Upon Newt’s return, Hermann pulled his penis out of the fly of his pajamas and let Newt touch it. He ejaculated carefully into the towel, and made sure Newt did the same when he returned the favor a few minutes later. There was not enough room in the bed for both of them to sleep, so Hermann insisted that Newt climb back up into his own bunk when they were finished.

After that point, Newt considered himself and Hermann to be boyfriends, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that entailed. He was often disappointed that Hermann failed to keep up his end of the deal. For example: when that one maintenance guy shoved Newt and told him to “stop being such a spaz,” Hermann did _not_ do the chivalrous thing and beat the guy to death with his cane while screaming “ _How dare you say that about my perfect boyfriend_ ” in German (which Newt had coincidentally begun to think of as a very romantic language shortly after meeting Hermann).

Another thing that Hermann had failed to do after they became boyfriends forever was let Newt see him naked. He never refused Newt a replaying of that first furtive evening when it was requested, but it remained a clandestine activity only engaged in under the covers, in total darkness. Thus Newt’s fixation only increased, until he became obsessed with the thought of seeing Hermann naked.

He chose not to explicitly address this issue until the 19th of January. On that date, while Hermann read in bed, Newt grasped the edge of his bunk and flopped over into Hermann’s space, hanging upside down and saying matter-of-factly, “It’s my birthday today, so you have to do whatever I want.”

“Oh?” Hermann replied, turning the page. “And where is that written?”

Newt sighed and disappeared from Hermann’s sight for a moment. Hermann heard some scribbling and a piece of paper being torn from a notepad. Newt leaned back over and handed him the paper. In Newt’s distinctive, childish handwriting, it said:

It’S NeWt’S BIRtHDAY tODAY, SO YOU HAVe tO DO WHAteVeR He WANtS.

“And what is it that Newton wants?” Hermann asked, setting the paper aside.

“I want…” Newt announced.

“Keep your voice down.”

“I want you to lie there, and with the lights still on, I want to take your clothes off and touch you _all over_.”

“What’s your second choice?” Hermann said, pretending to go back to reading his book.

“Dude, what is the problem?” Newt hopped down and sat in Hermann’s bunk. “Okay, we’ve been really close for a long time now, right? So you _have_ to be honest with me: are you an alien?”

“No.”

“A robot?”

“No.”

“Are you afraid that if you took your clothes off in front of me I would see that you are _any_ kind of non-human entity?”

“No.”

“‘No’ you’re not a non-human entity, or ‘no’ you’re not afraid?”

“Both!”

“Are you saving your nudity for when we get married?”

“What do you mean _when we get married?_ ”

“You do know that, like, a third of the people in the Shatterdome are ordained ministers in some weird religion or other. All we have to do is ask one of them to perform a ceremony and then we’d be all set to make an honest man of you.”

“That is not the issue.”

Newt flailed his arms and howled, “Well then what _is?_ ”

 

 

**2.**

 

Hermann Gottlieb’s earliest memory was of hating his body.

He was perched on an examination table, and small as he was, it seemed a dizzying distance to the floor below. His mother was standing next to the table, and a strange man in a white coat sat in a swivel chair nearby.

“Unfortunately, no study has yet been able to find a method of predicting outcomes for infants,” the man said. Hermann did not understand most of these words at the time, but he remembered them, he remembered everything, and by the time he was old enough to understand what the words meant, he had repeated them so many times in his head that they had become just a string of meaningless sounds. What he did understand was that it was because of his body’s failure to grow properly that his mother had to bring him to the hospital all the time, and he must have angered God terribly to deserve this punishment.

“The potential complications of using the Pavlik harness seemed too harsh to justify what looked at the time to be a very mild dysplasia, which is often outgrown with little or no impairment of quality of life. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Gottlieb, but at the time, the choice you made to wait and see was the best one.”

“Well, now that I know that waiting was the _worst_ possible choice, what options are there?”

“Surgery to correct the adductor and iliopsoas muscles should sufficiently address the problem. Following that, Hermann will need to wear a brace or a splint as he continues to grow.”

Even at that age, Hermann understood what “surgery” meant. He’d seen it on television. They made you go to sleep and then they opened you up and put their hands inside you, and they got covered in your blood.

The masked strangers promised him that when the surgery was over, he would be able to walk like the other children and not hurt anymore, and even hinted that he might be able to have all the ice cream he wanted, as a reward for his cooperation. But when they put what they called the “elephant nose” on him to make him go to sleep, he screamed for his mother until everything went black.

He woke up in excruciating pain and covered in bandages around his hips and between his legs. He was certain that his private parts had been cut off. When he asked his mother if this had happened, she said, “No, sweetheart, no, of course not,” but she wouldn’t let him see under the bandages.

For years after that, when he was out of the room, when they thought he couldn’t hear, his parents told their friends, “Hermann was such a happy little boy. But after the surgery, he became so shy and gloomy. He doesn’t even smile. What child doesn’t smile?”

Hermann still had to wear a brace, which his schoolmates taunted him about. No deviation from normalcy was tolerated among children, who had yet to understand the concept of “tact,” and certainly no one with an awkward gait wearing a medical device was accepted into their skipping, jumping, running, climbing ranks.

His body began to change when he was eleven or twelve. He did not like to look at his genitals, and rarely touched them, because it was impossible to do these things and not be reminded of his adjacent disfigurement. By this time, his peers had gradually stopped tormenting him, partly because they had learned a modicum of grown-up politeness, but mostly because they were too wrapped up in their own lives – their dates, their cars, their acne, and their libidos – to pay any thought to him at all.

There was another boy at school who had lost a leg in a car accident, but that had not stopped him from having lots of friends and being very popular with girls. He was funny: quick-witted but never cruel. Everyone was so enthralled by his humor, by turns droll and clowning, that they did not notice his slight shambling on his prosthetic leg.

When those same pretty girls and brash boys looked at Hermann, however, all they saw was his physical impairment. Even the words that came out of his mouth and the emotions he expressed with his face were inextricably linked with his disability. He knew this, he knew it was his own fault, that it was because he had such a miserable attitude about it, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t get over it. He had let his leg become _him_.

  
And after a while, he stopped wishing that he could get over it. He got comfortable with feeling the way he did. It became his identity, and he clung to it. At some point in his youth, the thought of being happy, of seeming pleasant to others, and of being perceived as sexually attractive, made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want that, anymore than his pleasant, sexually attractive peers would have wanted to acquire _his_ qualities, because pleasantness and sexual attractiveness were not who he was.

He became strangely proud of this. His self-limiting, self-defeating insistence on maintaining a churlish, bitter identity is what allowed him to spend his youth in the single-minded pursuit of excellence in mathematics and engineering, unburdened by petty distractions like sex or fun.

Those social muscles, not being exercised, atrophied, just like the ones in his leg and hip that he neglected when he accidentally-on-purpose “forgot” to go to physical therapy. At the age of twenty-five, when he was recruited by the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps and given the prestigious and desirable task of helping to save the world, the only intimate experience he had ever had, had been with the foreign hands that had invaded his body when he was four years old.

His solitude and shame was an immovable object inside him, at that time. He had yet to find out that it would soon encounter an unstoppable force.

 

 

**3.**

 

Hermann spent several seconds contemplating whether and how he should answer Newton’s question. All his life, he had rebuffed inquiries about his past, and his personal life, entirely. And he’d always felt justified in doing so, as those questions were always leveled out of perverse fascination. Now, Newton, who had never sunk so low as to ask for those reasons, was now asking for genuine reasons, because he apparently had some sort of attachment to him. So to dismiss Newton’s concerns outright would not be fair…but what was the alternative? To morbidly spill his whole life story then and there, unbidden, when Newt had just wanted to have some fun?

Thankfully, he was rescued from having to make this decision when Newt said, “Okay, let me ask you another way: is it that you yourself have a problem with being naked? Or is it more like you are afraid that _I_ will have a problem if I see you naked?”

This question did not really simplify things, but Hermann felt that, when he answered “The latter,” he was not lying, _per se_.

Inexplicably, Newt grinned. “Ohhh, _now_ I see what this is about. You’re afraid my mortal eyes won’t be able to handle all your sexiness, and if I catch a glimpse of your splendor, I’ll be blinded, and you’ll feel guilty.”

No one had ever, ever supposed that Hermann would be attractive underneath his clothes. His mouth twisted as he suppressed a smile of his own. “Don’t you try to make me laugh right now. This is serious.”

“Just let it out, dude. Don’t try to deny that I am the most hilarious person you know. That’s a bad way to live. Okay so listen, you’re afraid that if I get you naked I’m not gonna like what I see. Right? But I am a scientist! I like everything that I see! I mean, okay, you’re a scientist too and you don’t like anything, but you’re one of those _grumpy scientists_.” (Here Newt made a comically frowny face.) “But see, that’s why we’re so amazing together! When people see how grouchy you are, that makes me look good…” (Here Hermann rolled his eyes.) “…but then I make you _feel_ good. About life and stuff. Because I’m so awesome and positive!”

Hermann considered this. “Your constant presence has definitely given me a new appreciation for certain things in life. Silence, for example. Alright, you have convinced me. I will let you…do what you want to do. But if I change my mind at any point, you must immediately stop, and you will never initiate a conversation on this subject again. Is that understood?”

“Aye-aye, cap’n!” Newt saluted, then got up to flick the overhead light switch on.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“I said ‘with the lights on.’ I meant _all_ the lights. This isn’t a classy candlelit dinner in a French restaurant where I get a plate with two bites of food on it. This is gonna be a _buffet_. Now lie back down, ‘cause I’m gonna drive.”

Hermann laid flat on his back in the bed, his hands folded on his chest. “You’re going to drive…to the buffet,” he muttered. Ignoring him, Newt grabbed the blankets and gave them a good hard yank to dislodge them from where Hermann’s hospital corners were still in place. He flopped down on top of Hermann, who flinched at the sudden onslaught of him.

The first thing Newt did was lift Hermann’s left hand up, and with eager, clumsy fingers, flicked open the button on the cuff. He lowered his head and kissed the inside of the exposed wrist. Then he fondly felt the protrusion of his ulna, as if approving of the fact that Hermann’s wrists were just as ghoulishly bony as his hands.

Newt gave the same treatment to the other wrist, taking the same amount of time, not hurrying just because he’d felt he’d made his point sufficiently with the first one. Then he let Hermann’s hands fall to his sides, and made his way upwards, where he undid the top button of Hermann’s pajamas. Just the one. He slowly brought his face close enough to the newly exposed skin that Hermann could feel two, three of his breaths before he finally pressed his lips to the notch between Hermann’s collarbones. Then he hummed, as if it had been delicious, just that little thing. He worked his way up, taking his time, kissing up Hermann’s throat and feeling it swallow nervously, over his jaw as it flexed, and finally ghosting across his mouth, from which came short, shallow breaths.

All this, and still only the top button undone. “This is going to take all night,” Hermann sighed.

“Good to know you and I are on the same page for once,” Newt whispered against Hermann’s mouth.

The first time their lips touched, Hermann felt a jolt go all the way through him like electricity. He opened his mouth wider, to gasp, and Newt dipped his tongue inside, which drove him to even greater heights of pleasure and shock. It was wet. Was that why it was so exciting? Or was it the sinuous movement of that invading muscle? Why did a kiss on the lips cause such an intense feeling in his genitals? It must have been to do with the mucous membranes. They must operate like a network, connected to the brain and to each other. Hermann became so wrapped up in trying to understand what he was feeling, he did not even notice that Newt was back to unbuttoning his pajamas, until he felt cool air over his breastbone.

Newt spread the shirt open, making sure to keep his palms flat and fingers spread to maximize the skin-to-skin contact. Hermann’s breath was coming in little hiccups now, as Newt slid his fingers into the spaces between his ribs. Because he was lying on his back, beneath his last rib Hermann’s belly was concave, the shameful core of his scrawniness. Newt saw the anxious look on Hermann’s face as he caressed this smooth, flat plane of flesh, and said, “I don’t even understand what you’re upset about! This is just another illustration of how perfect we are for each other! Because look.” Newt reached back to pull his shirt off over his head, then laid down fully on top of Hermann. His paunchy belly fit perfectly into the valley of Hermann’s. “We’re like puzzle pieces!”

Hermann had to laugh at that, just a little huff to acknowledge that perhaps Newt had a point, even if it was not one grounded in any legitimate scientific principles.

Newt lifted himself and bade Hermann do the same, so that he could pull Hermann’s arms out of his pajama sleeves. He kissed all down Hermann’s arms, noting that his right bicep (and tricep, and pectoral, and deltoid) were thicker, on account of his use of the cane, propelling himself along with those muscles to compensate for the ones he could not utilize so well. Everyone had more development on one half of their upper body, based on their dominant hand, but in Hermann this difference was more pronounced. Between this, his gaunt middle, and his slightly hunched posture when leaning on the cane (not currently apparent), Newt was beginning to understand why Hermann was self-conscious about his body, though he still found that opinion absurd. Not that it was any good telling Hermann this. He had never believed Newt when Newt told him his opinions were stupid; why would he start believing it now? But hopefully, with a little more cajoling, Hermann would come around to Newt’s way of thinking in his own time.

Newt nudged Hermann to lie back down on the bed, and gazed down upon him, lightly caressing wherever it took his fancy to wander. Hermann arched his back, moved into Newt’s hands. The most fun thing for Newt was to watch Hermann’s face, as he gradually came to realize that he did not abhor being looked at or touched. He might abhor being looked at or touched by everyone else in the world except for Newton Geiszler, but all along he had been starved for that exception, and he hadn’t known it until this moment. He was a man of such acute expertise, and had immersed himself in a narrow slice of the human experience until he had believed it was all there was to life. Now the simplest of joys, the pleasure of being touched, was astonishing to him near to incomprehensibility. Newt felt a bit like he was showing Leonardo da Vinci a computer.

When Newt’s fingertip brushed the edge of one of Hermann’s nipples, he was struck by how soft and supple that pink flesh was. Not that he’d been completely unaware of the physical properties of nipples; it just wasn’t something he’d paid a lot of attention to. Now, he dove down to place his lips upon first one, then the other, teasing them with his tongue until they were no longer flat but had little peaks, then placing his entire mouth over each to suckle softly.

Each time Newt sucked, another sympathetic stab of pleasure resonated in Hermann’s prick, and soon his breaths were punctuated by little _ooh_ noises.

“I can do it harder, if you want,” Newt suggested.

“I don’t know if I want it,” Hermann replied. So Newt gave him a demonstration, which included a tentative nip with his eye teeth. This time Hermann felt a sharp unpleasant twinge, and yelped, “No, no, I don’t want that. Do it nicely, like before.”

Newt continued lavishing attention on his nipples, and the way they were situated, Hermann could press his hard prick against Newt’s belly. It added up to Hermann feeling maybe just the tiniest bit sexy, or at least, that some part of him might be sexy. But Newt was now ready to venture the short distance to a place Hermann still found very unsexy indeed (though he was wrong _again!_ ). Newt scooted forward, pushing against Hermann’s bicep in order to steal his way into the warm hollow of his armpit. He nuzzled it with his nose and got a deep whiff. Not too long out of the shower, Hermann smelled pleasingly musky, natural. Newt hummed his approval as he exhaled.

Nonetheless, Hermann was baffled. “Why are you doing that?”

Newt lifted his head. “Because you smell good.” He idly stroked the fuzz there, as he went on. “That’s where real attraction comes from. It’s not visual; it’s about pheromones. I wouldn’t stick my face in, like, just anyone’s pits, that’s gross. But your pits smell good to me.”

Hermann turned his face away and made a soft noise of disgust, too feeble to indicate any actual loathing, just a concession to social norms before he let Newt continue what he was doing. Newt kept as much of himself as possible plastered to Hermann at all times. Even after they had stopped wasting time _not_ being boyfriends, they had continued to waste time touching just one place on each other’s bodies. It was time to make up for that. And anyway, Newt was still afraid Hermann might change his mind and never give him this chance again. (And he wasn’t even half done yet.)

He rubbed his face against Hermann’s solar plexus, letting his cheek and lips be caressed by the fine trail of hair that began at Hermann’s navel and made its way down to regions yet unexplored. Newt held up one hand, miming holding an audio recording device. “Have discovered that Hermann Gottlieb does possess a belly button, which means he is _probably_ human. Further information pending.” When he looked up and saw Hermann covering his mouth to keep from laughing, he “dropped” the device and pressed his tongue into Hermann’s navel. Hermann shrieked and seized up, clutching the back of Newt’s head. The stab of Newt’s tongue wasn’t particularly ticklish, but it gave him a strange, deep tingle _inside_. He couldn’t bear it, and groaned “Stop that! Everything was going so well, but now you’re just making me act silly!”

Newt grinned. “Oh yeah? Did that make you feel _funny_ inside?”

A shiver overcame Hermann at the realization that Newt had known exactly what he was doing. “I said stop. Be nice.”

“I am being so nice right now!” Newt pinched the fabric of Hermann’s pajama bottoms and tugged at them gently. “I am now _nicely_ telling you that it’s time for these to go.” Hermann drew in a nervous breath through his nose. Newt sat up so he could maneuver properly. Beneath the waistband of the pajamas, he saw a sliver of Hermann’s boxers.

“You wear underwear under your pajamas?”

Hermann blinked. “Is that wrong?”

“Um, yeah kinda. You gotta let your junk breathe sometimes. There is no reason to place those kind of night-time restrictions on your junk.”

“My junk.” Hermann snorted at this. “Didn’t humans used to refer to their genitals as ‘jewels’? That’s quite a downgrade.”

“Yeah, well, brains are sexier anyway.” While Hermann was distracted by the implications of this reply, Newt grabbed the sides of his pajamas and boxers and yanked both down in one go. He didn’t stop until they were all the way off, untangled from his feet, and on the floor. Then he saw the source of all Hermann’s shyness and ill-temper.

From Hermann’s right iliac crest down to his groin ran a thick, white, crescent-shaped scar. The skin immediately surrounding it was puckered in places, and dotted with more flecks of scar tissue, where the sutures had been. It was a sobering contrast to the lovely erect penis which jutted out adjacent to it, the foreskin pulled back and the head smeared with pre-come.

Hermann kept his gaze averted, both from himself and from Newt’s expression, in case Newt was put off. “It’s been like that since I was a boy,” he began by way of excusing it. “The doctors did all they could, but there was—”

“Um, excuse me, but the only approved topic of conversation tonight is how amazingly hot you are. So if you don’t have anything to contribute to that topic, then just nod and smile at the things I say, alright?” Newt lowered his head and gently kissed the outer end of the scar. Hermann was gasping in shock, his whole body trembling, as Newt lovingly made his way across the slash of white scar tissue, dropping light kisses all along the way, until his nose was in Hermann’s pubic hair. He inhaled deeply again, but did not touch the rock-hard cock that was just beyond the reach of his tongue. Instead, he stroked his way down Hermann’s thighs, to the backs of his knees and his calves, and wherever his hands slid, his mouth followed, kissing skin that was luminously pale from never having seen sunlight, and exquisitely sensitive, especially where there was no hair. Hermann’s shins and calves were fuzzy, but the insides of his thighs were smooth and soft; his breath hitched and his muscles tensed when Newt caressed them.

Hermann could hardly fathom what had just happened: Newt had seen and acknowledged his shameful disfigurement, had treated it like it was not a shameful disfigurement at all, and then merrily moved on to the next point of interest. That was it. It was as if that aspect of Hermann’s body did not, by necessity, prevent him from being loved, or indeed prevent him from becoming all flushed and tingling as he responded to physical contact.

Meanwhile, Newt did not want to neglect a single part of Hermann’s body, so he happily traveled all the way to his feet, which he kissed even though Hermann was once again disgusted. “You just showered,” Newt said, “how dirty could they be?”

“They’re _feet_ ,” Hermann protested.

As usual, Newt ignored any sensible implication inherent in this statement. “I know! They’re delicious!” And without hesitation he took the three smallest toes of Hermann’s left foot into his mouth and sucked and licked. “I mean, don’t misunderstand,” he said when he’d apparently finished, much to Hermann’s relief. “I’m not like _into_ feet or anything. I’m just proving a point.”

“That you’re crazy?”

“That you are _sexy!_ Could you please keep up? I mean, I know that your knowledge of physiology is limited. Puny, I mean _infinitesimal_ really, compared to mine. That’s why you need a genius like me to explain it to you. Physiologically, you are awesome. Well, biologically, really. Physiology is just applied biology. Actually, biology is just applied chemistry, and I was telling you earlier about the chemistry and stuff. Like the way your pits smell, remember? So yeah, submit it for the next edition of the _Journal of Physical Chemistry_ : you’re sexy. Now roll over so I can do the other side of you.”

Hermann rolled onto his front slowly, and Newt didn’t rush him. He had to adjust himself, to get his erection in a place where he could lie on it and it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable. Newt hadn’t so much as touched it yet, which confused him, until he thought about all the times they had lain next to each other and only touched each others’ genitals, and he realized that he had been the one who’d decided that things were going to proceed that way, and Newt had probably only followed his lead for fear that challenging him would get him kicked out of the bed.

But Newt was interested in all of Hermann, he’d made that clear. At the moment he was particularly interested in Hermann’s back and shoulders, which he began to squeeze and massage without mercy. Feeling those fingers digging into his flesh, Hermann cried out at the pain, but it soon transmuted into relief, as the knots in his muscles were kneaded into submission, and then all sorts of new vowel sounds spilled from his lips. This was quite different from the gentle caresses Newton had been administering all evening. This was tough love.

“I _am_ pretty amazing at this,” Newt said in response to Hermann’s noises of agonized bliss, “but you really should see a professional.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Hermann said. “It would be too much like…like the physical therapy.”

“Oh. Did you want me to stop?”  
  
”No, you’re fine. With you it’s…different.”

Newt beamed at this, and even more so when Hermann went on, his cadence slow and relaxed, his face half-pressed into the pillow: “Everything about you is different. I don’t know how to explain it. You just do something to me.”

Newt smiled and said softly, perhaps the softest he’d ever spoken, “I am totally going to do _everything_ to you.” And then, as if to demonstrate this, he slid his hands down Hermann’s thighs, then back up so that his thumbs rested in the creases where thigh met buttock, and gently spread Hermann’s cheeks apart. He put his face close to Hermann’s skin and exhaled warmly. A full-body shiver overcame Hermann; he was trembling under Newt’s hands, whispering, “Newton, are you—” The question was soon answered for him, as the tip of Newt’s tongue touched his hole.

Newt made a few tentative upward swipes, punctuated by kisses to the tender little opening, then moved lower to kiss and suck at Hermann’s perineum. He could feel how tense Hermann was, not wanting to lose himself in the sensations of this particular act. Newt tried to help him along by moaning himself. Between the vibrations this sent into his body, and the difficulty of resisting Newt’s lead, Hermann finally let loose a rough and prolonged groan, and tipped his hips just the tiniest bit, to get more contact. Newt grinned at his victory. Best not brag yet, though. He was only getting started.

He pulled Hermann’s cheeks further apart and tongued him more liberally, pressing firmly and broadly against all that sensitive flesh and soaking him with spit. Hermann was clutching the pillow now, making filthy noises and pressing back against Newt’s face. He’d had never imagined that anything could feel the way the wet heat of Newt’s mouth felt on his skin.

Newt’s caresses had been delicate at first, but the more Hermann moved around under his mouth, the sloppier it got, and the pleasure spiraled until the sounds coming out of both their mouths were as filthy as the very idea of Newt’s tongue being where it was. Soon, Hermann was feeling not just Newt’s tongue and lips, but his nose and chin, bumping into him as he rocked back and forth. Newt continued to hum his encouragement, using his hands to simultaneously hold Hermann open and hold him down, so he would have to squirm harder.

Newt kept at it until his neck and tongue were both aching, and Hermann was a proper, whimpering mess. “I’ll bet you are really ready to come,” Newt remarked smugly.

“ _Yes,_ ” Hermann gasped. Newt guessed that he had been for some time, but had been too shy to articulate it. This made him chuckle as he guided Hermann onto his back again. Hermann saw Newt’s mouth and chin slick and shiny with spit, and made a soft, wordless noise.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you wait any more,” Newt said, as if Hermann were the one with no patience. Then he took Hermann’s cock into his mouth.

It was over in a matter of seconds. Newt had even planned to finger Hermann’s hole a little bit as he sucked, but he didn’t get a chance to get his fingers down there before Hermann shouted incoherently and put a hot, salt-bitter load of spunk in his mouth. Hermann could feel Newt swallow happily around him, and suddenly a lot of odd thoughts were swirling around him, far more complex than the combination of relief and mild disgust that he’d always felt when he and Newt finished masturbating each other under the covers in the dark.

He had allowed those hurried, mostly silent fumblings to occur because he did not believe that it compromised his identity. He had a very specific idea about who “Hermann Gottlieb” was, and having brief sexual encounters with Newton was not entirely consistent with that, but it certainly did not shake his self-image to its very foundations. But could “Hermann Gottlieb” do things like feel intense, prolonged sensual pleasure at the hands of another person? Could “Hermann Gottlieb” happily, lustily participate in oral copulation, which ended with semen going into mouths and not into a towel?

Or would he have to say goodbye to this “Hermann Gottlieb” that he had been acquainted with for over thirty years, and begin life again as a sexual creature? He did not know. His feet and calves tingled. Why was that? And when he thought about what he had done, when he pictured himself ejaculating into the warm confines of Newt’s mouth, his stomach fluttered and his chest felt tight.

He snapped back to attention to find Newt hovering over him, nuzzling his neck. “I said, was it good?”

“Yes, it was very good,” Hermann mumbled. And then, because it seemed like the polite thing to do, he asked, “What would you like me to do for you?”

“I wouldn’t mind a BJ, if you’re up for it. But, uh, how could we do that so you’ll be comfortable?” He guessed that Hermann was not interested in kneeling, nor would Newt be any sort of a gentleman if he put a first-timer on his back and face-fucked him.

“I could sit and you could stand…” Hermann said, uncertainly; he did not know if that was acceptable fellatio protocol. But Newt thought that was a great idea. Hermann  swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and Newt stood between his open knees.

Hermann didn’t have to say anything; Newt knew he hadn’t done this before, and was perfectly prepared to go easy on him, even though his cock had been hard for ages and ached terribly. Rather than direct him, Newt decided to gather up all his willpower and just wait a moment, to see what Hermann would do on his own. He stood there and let Hermann grasp it at the base and examine it, moving his head hesitantly, as if there was a question of what angle he should approach it from. Newt’s patience wore thin very quickly, and he said, “Its okay, dude, just open your mouth a little and I’ll show you.” Hermann let his jaw fall open, and looked expectantly up at Newt, who guided himself just past Hermann’s lips.

“Okay, now close your mouth and suck, just on the tip is fine. Oh. Yeah, just like that.” Without thinking, Newt threaded his fingers into Hermann’s hair, clutching his scalp and gently guiding him back and forth, over just those first couple of inches.

“When I come, is it okay if I come in your mouth? Oh God, that would be so hot.”

Hermann pulled back just long enough to say cautiously, “I don’t see why not…?”

“Oh don’t worry, it’s super-easy. It doesn’t taste very good, but you just swallow it.”

Hermann nodded, and returned to his task. He still wasn’t a hundred percent certain what he was doing, but he tried to put some effort into it, to take it deeper, and when Newt impulsively pushed too deep and he gagged, he attempted to make it up by applying wet, open-mouthed kisses to the entire surface of it, working his tongue around and around.

Newt giggled fondly. “It’s okay man, you don’t have to get fancy right now. I’m really close. Like, super close. Like, I’m gonna come right now actually. Oh shit.”

A moment later, Hermann found his mouth suddenly full of hot, pungent fluid. Newt was right, it didn’t taste good, but it was no different than medicine; you just got it down. And once he had, Newt’s grateful noises made him swell with pride. That actually had been fairly simple, and the result, Newt’s gratitude and his endearing little shivers, far outweighed the effort. Now Hermann felt truly strange. What he’d just done couldn’t be taken back. He was now one of those people who Enjoyed Sex. Not just endured it dutifully, oh no. He Intended To Do It Again.

“Are you alright?” Newt asked. Somehow he’d ended up sitting next to Hermann on the bed. “Where did you go just now?”

“Nowhere.” Hermann cleared his throat.

“Um, I know you don’t like me crowding you in your bed, but do you think we could cuddle a little bit before you kick me back upstairs?”

“I think that would be alright.” With only a small bit of awkward muddling, they managed to find a way for Hermann to lie comfortably on his side while Newt spooned up behind him. The lights were still on. “I’ll turn them off when I get up to go back to my bed,” Newt promised. Hermann doubted that Newt would be getting up again. He wouldn’t do it of his own accord tonight, only if Hermann ordered him to. And Hermann didn’t think he’d have the heart to do that.

“Newton,” he whispered. “Was I good? You know, when I…”

Newt knew. “You were excellent, dude. A real natural.”

Hermann blushed at this blunt assessment. He might now be one of those low, crude people who Enjoyed Sex, but he was affronted by the accusation of being a _natural_ at it.

 

 

**4.**

 

Hermann was high up on the ladder in front of his chalkboard, enjoying the comforting, familiar smell and taste of chalk dust floating in the air, wondering if the people he had passed silently in the corridor that morning had been able to perceive that he was now a person who Enjoyed Sex.

Newt was also comfortably plugging away at his one of his customary tasks, elbow-deep in some gelatinous substance. Sometimes there was a squishy noise, and Hermann found himself blushing.

Late in the afternoon, Newt announced, “I gotta go, um, do some stuff. I’ll be back.”

“One day you’re going to get caught buying those kaiju parts,” Hermann warned him, though he knew Newt didn’t have much to worry about even if he was. What was the Marshall going to do? Fire the ( _second_ -)greatest mind he had working for him over some petty black market exchanges? That didn’t make it less wrong, though. Or less disgusting.

“I have a signed form,” Newt insisted. “It has a signature on it which _could be interpreted_ as belonging to Stacker Pentecost, and it contains language which _could be interpreted_ as allowing me to acquire anatomical specimens by any means necessary.”

“Alright, Double-Oh-Seven, get out of my sight then, and don’t bring back anything that smells bad enough to trigger the sprinkler system.”

Newt returned two hours later, empty-handed, and returned to his work.

“Nothing?” Hermann said. “You never come back without at least a jar of vitreous humor. Or one of those cheap plastic kaijus with the arm that goes…” he imitated the repetitive action of a recent merchandising variation on the Lucky Cat.

“I never said I was going to the Boneslum,” Newt said. “I told you I was going ‘out,’ and I mentioned that I happened to possess a signed form, which may or may not have been relevant to my task.”

“So where did you go?”

Newt made a “come here” gesture with one finger. He had to do this for eighteen seconds before Hermann finally got up to follow him. Newt led him to their room, and opened the door, gesturing for Hermann to enter first. Inside there was now eighteen fewer square feet of floor space, owing to the fact that Newt had sawn the steel supports for the top bunk away from the bottom bunk, and placed the two beds side-by-side. Upon closer inspection, Hermann saw that he had managed to measure it perfectly, so that the supports became legs identical in length to the legs of the bottom bunk. He had secured the adjacent sets of legs with a few zip ties, which Hermann approved of. (Welding them together would have made the frame impossible to move around, and duct tape would have eventually been compromised by deterioration or warping.) They now had a serviceable full-size bed.

Newt was vibrating with excitement, and watched Herman’s face carefully. When no obvious reaction was forthcoming, he finally cried out, “Now we can cuddle _all the time!_ ”

Hermann smirked. “I don’t know about that. I think they still expect us to do some work around here.”

“Whatever. I mean maybe we can find time for work, still. Come on, let’s cuddle right now.”

Hermann checked his watch. He didn’t anticipate being allowed to leave the bed once he’d gotten in. “Let’s eat dinner first.”

“Okay, dinner and then cuddles. Naked cuddles.” Newt was waggling his fists with elation. “Yeah.”


End file.
